At the closing service of the World Council of Churches, meeting in New Haven, Connecticut, the delegates from 165 Protestant and Orthodox denominations from 50 countries heard a plea for closer bonds among all Christians. They felt it appropriate also to give thanks that, as they see it, such bonds are now being forged. The 14 members of the council’s executive committee were re-elected in a body…. The council also urged governments to act on their own to stop nuclear bomb tests for a trial period.
Some Roman Catholic spokesmen see discussions about religious liberty at the council meetings as greatly damaging world Catholic-Protestant relations. Debate at the meeting had arisen over a proposed resolution about Protestant difficulties in Colombia, South America, where, it was charged, Catholics persecute and harass Protestants. But a demand that the council charge Catholicism with suppressing religious liberties in some countries was dropped. Instead, the group’s executive committee was asked to study religious liberty in all nations. Executive Director Martin Work of the National Council of Catholic Men says so much more might have been done had the World Council leaders addressed themselves to matters of common spiritual and moral concern. Does the director intend, by this, to suggest that religious liberty is not one of the most important of matters that should be of common spiritual and moral concern? How academic can one become about religious matters, anyway?
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A prominent Quaker has told 1,000 Methodist Sunday school leaders that religious life outside the church is possible but not probable. Dr. Elton Trueblood, philosophy professor at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, has added it is almost impossible to be a Christian alone. He says the church is a fellowship, and it has kept Christianity alive from the time it was established as a little body of ordinary men and women seeking to demonstrate their faith.
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The Third General Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation, which opens this coming Thursday in Minneapolis, will have on its agenda such issues as how the church should deal with communism, colonialism, and national policies, as well as how rifts might be healed among various Lutheran bodies. Among delegates from Lutheran churches in at least four Iron Curtain nations – East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia – will be Hungary’s Lutheran primate, Bishop Lajos Ordass. He has been described as one of the world’s most courageous religious leaders.
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President Eisenhower has proclaimed Wednesday, October 2, as National Prayer Day. He urged all Americans to pray on that day for enduring peace. How silly can we Americans get about setting aside days for this, for that, for everything under the sun? The president didn’t say what we should pray for on other days, but doubtless it would not make much difference if we jumped the gun and started praying for peace before the second of October.
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The Association of Catholic Layman of New Orleans has appealed to the pope to stop Archbishop Joseph Rummel from enforcing racial equality in Catholic parishes in the city. The association asked the pontiff to rule that racial segregation is not morally wrong or sinful. The archbishop has said that segregation is morally wrong. The petition was aimed mainly at stopping integration in parochial schools rather than in the churches themselves. Archbishop Rummel said the laymen have the right to petition the Holy See, but he declined to make any further comment. Whether one thinks discrimination through segregation is morally right or wrong is, of course, a matter for one to conclude out of all his scale of values with respect to human beings. But this reporter cannot help but wonder if those same rabid segregationists expect that in the heaven they anticipate, there will be a roped off area for members of the colored race. How can you believe that all of us are children of God but that skin color determines whether you are a child of the first class or some lower class?
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And speaking of segregation, it looks as if the most notorious segregationist at the moment is getting the kind of treatment that probably hurts most; he is being ignored. The hate-mongering secretary of the Seaboard White Citizens Council descended on Nashville last week as if he expected to be a conquering hero. He announced his purpose to be to save our state capital city from desegregation in the public schools. It appears of now that few citizens care to listen to him. His audience of last Sunday attracted only some 300-400 listeners, at least half of whom seemed to be attracted out of mere curiosity. Then he was refused a board permit to use the park for his fascist harangues. In his speech of last Sunday he tried to court the favor of Tennesseans by telling them they were more aware of their civic rights than were citizens of other states. Most of us probably take this as a cheap trick of a small time politician to butter up his listeners; also most of us probably look upon this as an effort to deceive – for he probably means that we are dumber than citizens of other states and don’t have any more sense than to fall for his hate-filled nonsense. Anyway, he attacked communists and communism so much that he practically outdid Khrushchev and company in his mention of the words. Nashville newspapers have almost completely ignored him. One sent a reporter to interview him, and the subsequent write-up revealed the polite boredom the reporter felt as he listened to this headline hunter. The other Nashville paper has so far ignored him completely. [John] Kasper cannot stand this. Like McCarthy, he thrives on newspaper headlines, and when these are not longer forthcoming, it is not unlikely that he will fold his tent, put his tail between his legs and silently slink away.
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Washington: United Press religious editor Louis Cassels says a little-publicized “prayer cell” movement is turning into one of the most significant developments in America. The movement consists of small groups of laymen who meet to pray and read the Bible in each other’s homes, usually once a week. Episcopal Bishop Austin Pardue of Pittsburgh says more than 100 such cells have sprung up in Pittsburgh alone, and there are thousands throughout the land.
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New York: The first of a series of religious services is being held today aboard the Mayflower II in New York Harbor. The service commemorates the piety of the original Mayflower pilgrims. The service includes responsive scripture readings led by the Mayflower’s Australian skipper, Capt. Alan Villiers, and a sermon by the Rev. Dan Potter, president of the Council of New York.
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From Buffalo, New York: It is announced that one of the biggest pilgrimages of American Catholics to the healing shrine of Bernadette at Lourdes will sail next January on the Queen Elizabeth. The Most Rev. Leo Smith, auxiliary bishop of Buffalo, expects to have more than 200 pilgrims. They will go from Lourdes to Rome for audiences at the Vatican.
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A Methodist bishop who has spent 46 years in India as missionary, teacher, administrator and episcopal head, Bishop Waskom Pickett, says that America should be fighting as hard for her future now as at any time in her history. He goes on to say that we can lose or win our foreign policy on whether we win or lose in Asia. Bishop Pickett has known Indian leader Nehru for some 40 years and describes him as the greatest bulwark against communism in Asia. He says that the greatest tragedy of our time was when India so eagerly sought our friendship and modeled her new government after our own, but we, for ill-conceived military reasons, held aloof from her. But we go on negotiating for and succeeding in getting, airfields from Pakistan in return for arms and equipment with which the country can threaten aggression against India in Kashmir. And this last is said without in any way passing upon the merit or lack of merit in India’s claim to the whole of that province.
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Dr. B. E. Holiday, professor of educational psychology at the University of Tennessee says there is a strong religious feeling existing among the people of Yugoslavia. Describing a recent trip through the Balkans which he made, Dr. Holiday says that religion is living on despite all attempts of the communists to destroy it. He saw large groups attending churches despite communist disapproval.
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Our Bible, and most other bibles, are replete with references to the importance of justice as well as mercy. An editorial in today’s local newspaper is worth calling to your attention in regard to the demands for justice in a situation about which we all know. This reporter has not failed to criticize the local newspaper when items in it, from a moral or ethical standpoint, seemed to call for such criticism. Moreover, he has made references at least twice to the case with which the editorial deals. From the response of you listeners, he feels that such references were not without merit. Anyway, the editorial reads as follows:
“East Tennesseans in growing numbers are becoming disgusted at the continuing battle of works among the assortment of officers, special investigators and attorneys participating in the Jenkins dynamite case.
“We believe we speak in the public interest when we call for a cease-fire in the forensics and an open-fire toward the kind of earnest and concerted effort needed to remove what, as of today, is an ugly blot upon the face of Washington County. Let’s cut out the grandstanding, gentlemen, and get down to the point, which is this:
A man has been killed, horribly killed, and the public is interested in seeing justice done – in an orderly, efficient and dignified manner. The public is not interested in competitive stage-play among those who, either by official responsibility or by invitation are charged with getting on the task at hand.
“This is Operation Murder, gentlemen, not Operation Sound Off!”
Do any of you listeners disagree with the rightness of this concise statement of the matter?
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It looks at the time of preparation of this broadcast that the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate Conference Committee are doing their best to effect an acceptable compromise between the different versions of the civil rights bill that is now before it, a bill that has seen and heard more heat than light in the Senate, the newspapers of the country, and radio and television stations of the nation in recent weeks.
Much that we have seen and heard on this important subject from senators simply cannot be true, and truthfulness is, or should be, one of the characteristics of a worthy public official. From a bill applying to civil rights generally, the present version would limit its scope to voting rights only. Which raises the question of how much do the voting rights of Negroes need protection? Well, the white parade of the Klansmen has all but disappeared as a threat to potential Negro voters. Lynchings have become largely a matter past history, thank God; but the pattern itself has merely changed, not disappeared. More subtle methods are used: jobs are threatened and in some cases taken away; threatening telephone calls are made to Negro leaders before election, calls that indicate dire things to happen if Negroes in the community vote. And the caller never gives his name, or at least his right name. Credit is withdrawn from Negroes who have the temerity to vote, or even to register to vote. Resort is even had to violence in the bombing of homes. Difficult examination questions are asked of Negroes; simple ones to whites, if the latter are questioned at all. These and other methods are parts of the intimidation pattern in the South of 1957. Wonder if those responsible ever took seriously the biblical passage which says that “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”